Weekend Recap

I am so tired right now! I could probably sleep for a good 24 hours straight. The younger two are napping(hopefully) and Hunter is having some quiet time(I think this is really the end of his naps.) We had a fun but busy weekend.

Brent's birthday was Thursday, and he wanted to go to the movies. My sister and bro in law were going to be up, so the plan was for them to watch the kids. We were planning on going to the late show so the kids were in bed anyway, and I thought it'd be easy. Callie woke up 5 mins after we left and was up when I got back at 11:30! That little stinker. I thought the plan was fool proof since she doesn't wake up till 4 usually. Brent stayed at the theatre and went to the midnight showing of the Dark Night with Alex. They were back about 3. Laci and I stayed up talking until mom and dad got in at 1 or so and Callie was up a few more times in the night, so that wasn't the greatest sleep start to the weekend. Brent had fun at the movies, though, so that was totally worth it.

Friday we went to the fair and park with the kids. They enjoyed seeing the cows, pigs, horses, ducks, bunnies and other furry things.

Saturday we went to a town an hour and a half away for a wedding. That was the reason the whole family was up. It was a nice, simple wedding. We came home and took a family picture:


My sister and bro-in-law were off to Hawaii Saturday night. They are expecting their first in February, so I hope she is feeling alright for their trip. Mom and dad left this morning for their vacation to the east coast, and I hope they have a great time as well. I feel jealous that I can't go on a vacation. We always go to Iowa, which is fine, but it'd be nice to go somewhere else. I know that most people don't go on vacations, but we always went on one every summer growing up, so it seems like somethings always missing. Last year we went camping with friends over the fourth at a place about three hours away, and that felt like a vacation. I was reading this blog this morning about having a "staycation" and I think that may be what we need. We are planning a weekend overnight to the cities in August, but I really want some uninterrupted JUST family time. There is enough stuff in our area to do that we never do that we could totally make a staycation fun. It's something we're thinking about.

Well, I'm going to go try to rest...

Mom!

Geocaching...

...is a lot of fun!! We had a really nice time last night. We had printed off three different spots that cache's where hidden and we found 2 out of the 3. Our first one was supposed to be hidden under a bridge. It was coincidentally right down Brent's uncle's driveway. That was the one we ended up not finding. There was a lot of graffiti under the bridge, so we figured people probably took it, which is annoying. We looked around a long time, I even stuck my hand in a hole b/c our clue was "Not too tight". We gave up on that one after looking about 20 minutes and headed to the next one. We drove down a one lane dirt road for quite a while and ended up here:

We decrypted a clue for this one that said, "A steep bank nearby". We found a steep bank in some tall grass and poison iv and went in at two different spots and Brent found it under some tree bark:

(I look very horrible in this pic)
We found it kind of cool but erie that there had been two other people that found it and logged in on the same day as us.

We went on to the next one, which was about 8 miles away. We went down another one lane dirt road, this time following someone. We hoped it wasn't another person looking for the cache, but it wasn't. We kind of felt like we were on the Amazing Race for a little while. We came to another lake access and walked a way down an ATV path. It was a pretty walk and when we got close to the coordinates we had to get off the path. This clue was "Cradled in a trio of birch trees thirty paces from the trail". I thought it would be easy, but there were LOTS of trios of birch trees. We finally found it hidden under some branches:
Once again, there had been someone else there that day.

We took a scenic (and unknown) way home. We saw 4 deer, which makes me nervous now, but we avoided a crash. It was a great time, and we hope to be able to do this again sometime.

The return of date night!

Yay! We decided to start up date nights again with our friends. We haven't done them since Callie was born. So, last night we watched our friends kids and tonight they are watching ours. It went pretty well(besides the fact that I was wiped out from being at the beach). Brent and I are hopefully going "geocaching" if the weather cooperates. (Thanks Erin and Ben for letting us borrow your GPS!) I am really excited to go, I hope it is as fun as it sounds. I think we'll pack a picnic for supper. I've pumped(and hopefully not scarred the boys too much, they were staring at me oddly the whole time. So much for privacy) the last two mornings and should have enough for Callie. It'll be my first time leaving her with someone other than Gma Debbie, but we'll have our cell phones.

We had a busy weekend with the Norman family reunion. There were lots more people there than I was expecting. It was nice to meet Brent's cousins and see his brothers and sisters again. Hunter really enjoyed playing with Uncle Joe. They played trucks and tractors for a LONG time. You can tell by his face he really likes Uncle Joe:
It was also nice seeing our nephew, Matty. He has passed Callie up in size by a lot! Here are some pics of the family(minus Jason and Fawnda who I didn't get a picture of :( :




On Sunday night we went kite flying with our friends. It was really fun. Brent and I both felt like kids again flying kites. We played at the playground nearby and ran and walked around the track with the kids, so they slept great that night. I wanted to take some pictures, but I was too busy having fun.

We went to the beach again yesterday and spent most of the day there. The kids floated around and got all sandy. The kids fell asleep on the way back and napped some in the van before our friends kids came.

I thought we'd take it easy this morning, but I again feel worn out. I pushed both the boys on the swing, made several walks around the house, worked on teaching Hunter how to write his name with chalk, read lots of books, did a puzzle, did a sticker puzzle, folded two loads of laundry and made lunch. I'll be glad for the fun break tonight. Hunter told me as he was eating lunch that I "was a good momma." Its good to hear that once in a while. I've been feeling like this a lot of times lately.

Callie

Why its good being married to a carpet cleaner and other fun stories...

We've had some not so dull moments around here the last few days. Right now Callie is in her serious teething mode, so I just gave her some Tylenol and am hoping she'll stay asleep for awhile. I'm on concussion patrol with Tate(more on that later) and I'm feeling a little under the weather.

A couple nights ago we were all sitting in the living room after supper and Callie was in her excersaucer. She started to fuss so I brought her out and put her on my knees and checked her diaper. She was poopy, so I took her in her room and changed her diaper. As I was still doing that I heard Hunter saying, "Oh gross, poop!" and Tate was saying "Yuck!" and poking something on the floor with his sword. After some investigation we found it was Callie's poop! Three spots of it on the floor going into her room! We were both very perplexed b/c she didn't have ANY on her outfit. Then I happened to look down at my capris and they were COVERED with poop! It was on my shirt and all over the capris. I checked on her dresser b/c I was leaned against that and sure enough it was covered in poop as well! Brent and I were so confused, but we think that when I checked her to see if she was poopy it somehow came out the back of her diaper, missing her outfit entirely and landing on me and then on the floor. Brent, being the super carpet cleaning guy, just hooked up his hoses to his van and cleaned it all up(along with a couple juice stains). It pays to be married to a handy man like that!

We were all playing around later and Brent did something to me(I don't remember what) and I whispered in Hunter's ear to go pinch daddy's nose(he was holding Callie). So Hunter went and tried to pinch his nose, but Brent stopped him immediately. About five minutes went by and Hunter approached Brent with a toy and handed it to Callie telling him it was for her. He then pinched Brent on the nose, totally catching him off guard! What a little trickster!! I can just see the wheels turning in Hunter's head coming up with that one.

The van has been in the shop since Monday morning and we are anticipating getting it back today. Its been a LONG three days knowing I can't go anywhere, but my friend came over yesterday and we went to the park here in town. I was nursing Callie when Hunter had to go potty, so he went over by a tree and started going. It was, however, very VERY windy yesterday and as he was done going potty I noticed he was crying. The poor guy got pee all over himself from the wind blowing it back at him! Moral of the story, Don't pee in the wind!

I feel like I've become a full time referee with the boys. They've been picking on each other and fighting like crazy. It's kind of exhausting. I had Hunter taking a break on the couch this morning and allowed him to get off, only to have him not two minutes later push Tate down and into one of the doorways. Tate got up and his face was covered in blood. Covered. I am not good at handling situations like this. I can't stand seeing blood on my babies and they better never break a bone b/c I'll faint for sure. Anyway, I wiped his face several times before I saw where the cut was, b/c it was bleeding so heavily. He cut open his eyebrow and got a fat upper lip. I had been planning on going to a friend's house this morning who also happens to be a nurse, so she came over to check on him to see if he'd need stitches, but she thought he'd be OK. He was laying around on the couch after that looking sleepy, so that's why I'm on concussion patrol. That poor kid. He has hit his head more times than I have in my whole life probably. He's sporting a Nemo band aid/eye patch for now.

Never a dull moment I say.

Some GREAT news!

It won't look like this much longer!

I've been wanting to blog about this for awhile now, but didn't want to jinx our chance by talking about it and getting my hopes up. We have been planning on re-siding our house, getting new windows and making a bigger dining room since the beginning of the year. We had someone come by the house back in January(it was funny when they came b/c we had our friends three kids for date night along with ours and I was very pregnant, I had to tell her we were just watching some of them) talking about this grant that the city was doing. We signed "intent to apply" and didn't think much of it until we received a letter back in late April. It told us to go to a meeting at the end of May to hear more. We were not even going to go to it b/c we thought that it was a far shot we'd be able to get this grant. We had our loan application for the bank all filled out and I was planning on running it to the bank the day after the meeting, but Brent went to the meeting and came home feeling like we might have a shot, so we sent our application in the next day. The city is giving grants for 8 houses for repairs and for energy efficiency. Eight houses! I am pleased to say that we received a letter today saying that we are one of them!!!! I am so excited about this!! This is a HUGE answer to prayers. The max a person can have is $20,000 and of that $20,000 we only have to pay 15%!!!!! So for about $3,000 we will be getting $20,000 worth of work done!! Also, they require licensed contractors to do all the work, so WE DON'T EVEN HAVE TO DO IT!!!! I'm not sure I know what that is like! The more I think about it, the more I feel God is really blessing us. We could have found out about this next year and we'd have had it all done, or we could have not even tried for it and been stuck with a huge loan that would have maxed us out. We're not going to be able to do everything that we originally wanted but I don't care b/c this is great and we'll be able to do those things eventually. I'm so excited to get new siding and windows!! Our goal was to have a more efficient house anyway, and this grant is all about that. We'll be getting contacted within the next few weeks to get going on everything. I'm so excited!!